


Shooting the Goose

by Remember When (scribblemyname)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Soulmates - Herded by an Angry Goose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-03
Updated: 2018-09-03
Packaged: 2019-07-06 13:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15887304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/Remember%20When
Summary: He stared at her, stared at the gun. "You shot your soul guide?""I'm giving it a day off," Maria said with a perfectly straight face.





	Shooting the Goose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tielan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/gifts).



Maria was in the middle of a firefight when there was a flurry of white feathers and loud honking noises. She shot it, like she'd been shooting everything else, and only let loose the profanity when it vanished instead of dropping to the ground bloody and bullet-ridden.

"I shot my soul guide," she told Fury later, when she was getting checked out by a nurse and trying to simultaneously check her hundreds of emails and messages while logging a report on the encounter for the grinning Fury. Apparently, her soulmate had finally decided to grow the necessary emotional or physical maturity for the guide to appear without any obvious triggering circumstances. (Her first boyfriend clearly hadn't been soulmate material.)

"Guess who we defrosted today," Fury replied, looking altogether too smug.

She stared at him. That couldn't be related.

Captain God Bless America. She thought to herself that it didn't matter, the goose would show up again, and it wouldn't lead there.

* * *

Of course, she was wrong.

* * *

It showed up on the day she was going to be introduced to Steve Rogers (after a series of other days when, presumably, it had intended to facilitate such an introduction), and she could still hear it squawking when he reached out to shake her hand.

He stared at her, stared at the gun. "You shot your soul guide?"

"I'm giving it a day off," Maria said with a perfectly straight face.

Amusement and incredulity warred on his face. "Won't that make it angry?"

"It's a soul guide, Rogers," she pointed out. "It's already angry."

Humor won out. They exchanged smiles, and she could see why his won so many people over during the war effort. She focused on the briefing.

* * *

The angry goose and its infernal honking seemed louder and more put out than usual as Steve Rogers practically fell into her, a rather unsubtle goose herding him without regard for orderly traffic in the hallways. Maria did her good duty as a member of SHIELD and shot it for him.

"Uh, thanks." Steve frowned down at her, as if still trying to figure out what had just happened while he caught his breath.

"Was that mine or yours?" she asked lightly, holstering her gun.

He stared at her oddly for a long moment, the realization slowly warming between them, not that she'd neglected to track the bird's timing and movements enough to not know before. But now, _Steve_ knew.

"I didn't have one before," he said. She could almost see the wheels in his head turning. He cocked his head a little, like an adorable puppy, only so much more attractive than one. "Would you like to go out for dinner sometime?"

It was flattering really. Maria would have to be blind and on libido-suppressing medication of some kind before she'd be insensible to being asked out by Captain America. She gave him a knowing once-over and was pleased to see him just about blush.

She didn't believe in shortcuts. Or really put much stock in a mystical goose whose primary responsibility was to show up out of nowhere and complicate people's lives until they willingly chose to complicate their lives themselves.

"I usually eat at the office," she commented.

"You seem—" He didn't seem to know how to finish that, but he hadn't missed her initial reaction, and after a moment of searching for words, he settled on, "—interested."

"Are you implying I'm not shallow enough to only be interested in seeing you with your shirt off?" Maria asked.

Steve coughed, ending on a short laugh. He looked surprisingly endearing with that self-deprecating, overly modest smile. "I could cook for you first."

"I occasionally have time to see people with their shirts off. I don't usually have time for dinners." And relationships. And the complications that came with them. "There's SHIELD."

"SHIELD."

He nodded, agreed. "I suppose you're a busy woman."

"I am, Rogers."

"Please. Steve."

"Well then." She smiled. "You should call me Maria. I'll swing by tonight."

* * *

She stayed late at the office, not on purpose, but because world security didn't keep business hours. An annoyed goose snapped its beak at her and worried at her generally impervious boots for an hour before finally resorting to flapping its wings and sending all her papers flying.

"Fine, fine." She stood up. "I already have a date," she pointed out. "I should just shoot you and you should leave me alone."

But soul guides usually weren't satisfied with a little casual sex, unless you counted that casual sex with the wrong person was enough to have them appear to try and drive you from the bed.

The mission hadn't been the first time she'd shot the goose.

* * *

Steve laughed at the sight of the goose fussing at her heels.

"An old friend," she commented dryly.

He let her inside, took her coat, ignored the goose circling them like it was trying to make sure they really did intend to spend the night. It honked once, apparently satisfied and vanished without additional inducement from a bullet.

"Is it always like that?"

"No." She'd never tried to spend the night with her soulmate before. "Just wait. It'll be camped out on the doorstep when I try to sneak out to go to work."

"You don't have to sneak out. I'll make you breakfast."

Maria huffed at him in exasperation as she settled onto his lap and physically expressed an interest in changing the subject. "Stop being too good to be true."

* * *

Of course, he didn't.

* * *

Steve Rogers respected her boundaries, gave her his jacket when she was cold, threw her a gun when she needed additional firearms in missions gone wrong, and stood up for his convictions against SHIELD turned HYDRA, corrupt governments, and deranged supervillains.

And he was extremely good in bed.

"Why is your goose honking this time?" Steve asked with a sigh from the bed where he was acting as her body pillow.

"Could be your goose," she pointed out. "It thinks I'm emotionally unavailable."

Steve was very quiet at that, which only made the goose on the other side of the bedroom door more obnoxiously loud. Maria couldn't shoot it through the door and was deeply considering whether to unsnuggle from the blankets and go address it.

"I like you that way," he said cautiously.

Dangerous territory. Maria sighed, sat up, rooted through her discarded clothing for a firearm. "I'm not taking relationship advice from a goose."

"Oh, so you're only interested in me for my body," he joked lightly.

"I told you. I'm shallow." She opened the door and shot the goose.

* * *

She was head over heels in love but unwilling to either admit it or just go ahead and call it a relationship, because in her line of work, people had to kill people they cared about sometimes, or let them sacrifice themselves, or let them die, and she'd rather be like Peggy Carter without the millstone of the love of her life dragging her through pain every day. She didn't have time to be the kind of woman who made a relationship work, and she didn't have the heart to give in to love then still have to steel herself for his eventual demise.

"He survived accidental cryogenic suspension," Natasha countered this ridiculous premise over far too much alcohol. "You couldn't pick a better candidate if you want someone miraculously immortal."

"He is hot," Maria admitted grudgingly.

Natasha smiled knowingly. "And sweet."

"He's too perfect. Too perfect people aren't perfect," Maria added mulishly.

"He's not perfect, Maria. You just think he is because you're in love."

The goose circling her heels, trying to convince her to leave the barstool and go find said love of her life, seemed to honk in agreement.

She downed the rest of her drink and asked for a refill.

He wasn't perfect. They disagreed on politics, necessity, SHIELD and oversight, whether dancing and romanticism had any place in their lives, but he _was_ hot. She wasn't going to find someone else who exasperated her in all the right ways and didn't actually mind that she was emotionally unavailable so long as she could be relied on.

"I'm reliable," Maria said aloud. "You can rely on me."

Natasha gave her an odd look and drained her own drink. "That's not why he likes you. He _trusts_ you."

"He trusts you."

"Maybe." A hint of fraught tension at that. Natasha wiped it away with another smile. "Maria. Please get rid of the goose for good and go tell him you love him. You don't have to get married."

She couldn't _fool_ the goose, but Natasha was right that it's not like the creature beating her legs black and blue with its wings and trying again to eat her boots really stuck around until a wedding. It just wanted her to lay her heart and soul out there for someone else to do with what he would.

"I hate you," she told it and signaled for the bill.

* * *

"I don't want this to change anything," she warned him before he'd even had a chance to say anything or react to her presence at the door of his room. "I don't want you getting overprotective and I won't either. I don't have time for sentiment."

Steve glanced both ways down the hallway. No goose nipping at her heels and no witnesses either. "Maria, what's this about?"

"I love you." There. She'd said it. "Whatever this is,"—and she absolutely refused to put a proper name to it—"I'd like it to continue."

He smiled that lopsided, ridiculously endearing smile that always made her want to melt a tiny bit inside when he directed it at her. "I'm gonna miss that goose."

"Don't start," she warned and came inside.


End file.
